Linking Online & Offline Marketing​

31st March 2014

What are QR Codes?QR codes are a really useful marketing tool that can link your print marketing with your digital marketing activity. They might look complicated but they are incredibly quick, easy and free to generate. Best of all you can link your website analytics to the code so you can track how they are used bringing a whole new level of feedback to print material which has not previously been available.

QR Codes are Quick Response Codes are barcode that are readable by free smartphones apps. They allow you to encode over 4000 characters that can be used to display text to the user, to open a webpage or social media page, save a contact to the address book or to compose text messages.

QR Code Generators

If you do a quick Google search for free QR generators you will see that there are 1000's available. Just enter 'free online QR code generator' into your search engine and pick one that you like the look of. They are all very similar. However, some of generators insert their own website name on your code on the free version and others enable you to generate codes in a range of sizes which is useful depending on where you want to place it. So check a few of them out until you find one you like.

How to Make Your Own QR Code

Think about the objective - what do you want the QR code to link to or what do you want the user to get from scanning the code? If you want to drive traffic to a special offer or a new product then you just copy the link to that page into the generator. It is a good idea to build in some kind of incentive to drive engagement with the QR code such as a competition, free draw or discount code.

It takes just seconds to generate and then you just need to test it to make sure that it links correctly to the content or page that you want it to. Once you've done that you can insert it into your print material.

Using Google Analytics to Track your QR Code

You can also track and monitor how many visitors are scanning the QR code to get to your site which is really valuable information, especially if you've placed your QR code on flyers or business cards. To link a QR code, use Google Analytics custom URL builder tool.

This lets you to create a URL that is specific for each campaign activity that you want to track. To use it, you enter the location of where you will be placing the QR code in the campaign source field, so 'business card' for example. The campaign medium is QR Code. Then name the campaign so that you will be able to identify it. It will generate an URL which you enter into the QR Code generator as before.

Once you try these codes you’ll see how easy they are to use and how much additional information you can provide customers with in a printed ad, poster, flyer or business card…….the possibilities are endless. You’ll also see the real value of linking them to your Google Analytics account enabling you to make more informed decisions which could change the way you use print marketing material in the future!